You have to read the book, or at least the last couple of chapters. However, ILLUSTRIOUS can't be counted. She wasn't there and not close enough to participate. Somerville wasn't ordered off. He had been told from the outset to avoid contact. He briefly considered a night attack, but decided on his own that an attack was too risky. Somerville was shaken by the ferocity of the attack on CORNWALL and DORSETSHIRE, and chose to withdraw after he concluded that the Japanese force was much larger than his intelligence sources had previously indicated.

While his two carriers had armored decks they were clearly vulnerable to torpedoes. And while the same number of dive bombers succeeded at Midway, consider that they attacked in daylight, and were a small piece of a larger force that involved nearly as many aircraft as their opponents had. Out of hundreds of aircraft that the Americans sent against the IJN only a handful scored hits. The RN had only a fraction of that force. The search radar on the Albacores had a very limited range. Somerville's problem was that if he he attacked, he would not have been able to escape a counter attack the next day. Maybe Nagumo wouldn't have pursued, but if he had, and had found Somerville, the result for Somerville would have certainly been disastrous. As for Taranto, there is no comparison between torpedoing ships at anchor in a closed harbor with finding and attacking ships at sea. And especially so with aircrews that had no experience in such attacks whatsoever.

Boyd does not speculate as to what Nagumo would have done if attacked by Somerville. Nagumo's force was attacked by aircraft from Ceylon. It did not deter him. His force shot down several of Somerville's Albacores that were engaged in searches. He had reason to suspect that Somerville was at sea. He sent out searces, but fortunately they didn't find Somerville.

But you raised the key point that was emphasized in the book: Somerville's job was not to engage but to preserve his fleet as a fleet in being to deter the Japanese from going deaper into the Indian Ocean. As far as his superiors were concerned, the preservation of the vital Persian lifeline was more important than an offensive action against the Japanese. As long as an invasion of Ceylon was not imminent, Ceylon was expected to defend itself. But preservation of the Eastern Fleet was much too important to chance a battle, even if some damage might have been inflicted. After the Ceylon attacks, the Eastern Fleet was withdrawn to East Africa, because it was deemed a safer place to be.

--Previous Message-- : I have to take issue with those who view : Somerville's chances of success against : Nagumo to have been unworthy of the risk. : : The classic operational account of the air : raid on Ceylon is Tomlinson's THE MOST : DANGEROUS MOMENT, the title being a quote : from Churchill about the potential strategic : threat from a Japanese-held Ceylon to : Britain's lifeline to Egypt and Persian Gulf : oil. Tomlinson notes the additional British : advantages of decoded radio intercepts, a : base at Addu totally unknown to the : Japanese, armored flight decks, a third : carrier (HMS Illustrious) en route, and : Catalina search aircraft from Ceylon which : regularly located Nagumo's force during the : operation. : : American operational experience with radar : may have been limited early on, but British : experience in the Med made them quite adept : at using radar defensively, to vector CAP : against incoming air strikes and splash : search aircraft before they spotted : anything. Torpedoing naval targets underway : at night is another matter, but based on the : accounts of radar-equipped Catalinas in the : Solomons campaign, ship wakes are far easier : to spot from the air than are attacking : aircraft from a ship. The Japanese were : certainly highly skilled at night gunnery, : but perhaps not so skilled at radical : evasive maneuvers against a night attack : from torpedo bombers. : : What would really make me want to read : Boyd's last chapter is an assessment of what : Nagumo might have done, had Somerville : actually attacked. At Pearl Harbor, Nagumo : refused to risk his force in a second strike : against an alerted enemy when the American : carriers could not be located, and his own : force was at the limit of its range. Would : he have acted differently at Ceylon against : an alerted enemy, having found neither : capital ships nor carriers where he expected : them to be, again at the limit of his range : (he'd already refueled from tankers), if : surprised by a night attack from an : unexpected direction? Ironically, the one : thing that surely would have lured Nagumo : into pressing his luck would have been : sighting the "useless" R-class : battleships of the "slow" Force B. : : I credit Somerville for trying to do the : Nelsonian thing until he was basically : ordered off. The British were used to : achieving results out of all proportion to : forces committed-- : the damage to the Italian battle fleet at : Taranto was done by a dozen torpedo-armed : Swordfish (the rest of the strike aircraft : had bombs and flares. Three dozen Albacore : aircraft may not seem like a lot, but : coincidentally the same number of dive : bombers inflicted the fatal damage at : Midway. One wonders what the operational (or : psychological) effect of a SINGLE torpedo : hit on a Japanese carrier might have been. :